Soldiers’ bodies, women’s words

Journal title MEMORIA E RICERCA
Author/s Valeria Tanci
Publishing Year 2011 Issue 2011/38 Language Italian
Pages 14 P. 85-98 File size 539 KB
DOI 10.3280/MER2011-038007
DOI is like a bar code for intellectual property: to have more infomation click here

Below, you can see the article first page

If you want to buy this article in PDF format, you can do it, following the instructions to buy download credits

Article preview

FrancoAngeli is member of Publishers International Linking Association, Inc (PILA), a not-for-profit association which run the CrossRef service enabling links to and from online scholarly content.

This essay focuses on the way Italian women interpreted the disabilities caused by the First World War. Considering short tales or novels written by women and addressed to a female reading public, this article shows the presence of a strong gender stereotype, which was essential for the acceptance of the disabled soldiers among women in the post-war society. The way this stereotype influenced women’s reaction to the presence of different kinds of mutilations has been researched through the letters many of these women wrote to the Italian Prime Minister and, after 1922, to Mussolini himself, in order to have their rights respected. These two very different kinds of sources show us the difference between the way the war and its consequences were conceived and the reality, but they also make clear one of the reasons why the transition from war to peace was usually more peaceful than expected.

Keywords: War aftermath, War Disabilities, Women writing, Female reading public, Gender; Stereotypes

Valeria Tanci, Corpi di soldati, parole di donne in "MEMORIA E RICERCA " 38/2011, pp 85-98, DOI: 10.3280/MER2011-038007